Why Dadaocheng should be your first stop in Taipei? This charming neighborhood, sometimes referred to as Old Taipei, is smaller, quieter, and way more manageable. Filled with tea shops, traditional apothecaries, artist’s boutiques, temples big and small, and of course, the area’s most pronounced feature of Japanese colonial-era buildings (and a few homes and shops dating back to the Qing dynasty), you’ll find no more charming a neighborhood in which to base yourself in Taipei than the Dadaocheng neighborhood.
Though there are plenty of hotels in the Dadaocheng neighborhood, if it’s history and local charm you’re after, you can’t do better than the DG, a quirky boutique hotel on the northern end of Dihua Street in a restored Japanese-era Colonial building.
What’s more, there are no shortage of places to eat, drink and be merry in Dadaocheng, with the majority of these being along the main drag (Dihua Street). From traditional Taiwanese noodle and rice dishes to fried chicken and thick squid soup, Dadaocheng is definitely a spot where locals come for comfort food.

Why return from a trip to Taiwan with generic gifts for friends, family and colleagues back home when you can customize your gift to fit the person? Who gets what? Let Taiwan Scene break it down for you!

Eric Lin was not merely my first Taiwanese friend – we’d actually met on the flight that brought me to Taiwan. He was trying to start a business with his friend based on a design idea they’d come up with in their spare time for better packaging of fragile items, which would enable him to quit his monotonous engineering job. He was great fun to talk to, and I was drawn to his complicated shyness: just awkward enough for it to be apparent, but not enough to stop him from ringing me up to have coffee.

If strolling through scenic history-drenched streets filled with cultural attractions, unique shopping venues and an abundance of great food is your thing, Taipei’s Dadaocheng neighborhood is well worth a visit. The neighborhood just north of Taipei’s Bei Men , or north gate station become increasingly popular with travelers over the past few years (much to the bemusement of locals, who’ve been hanging out here since the late Qing dynasty).

Dadaocheng is a busy neighborhood on most days, especially in the weeks leading up to the Lunar New Year holidays. But even on the busiest days things are usually a bit quieter on two blocks west, which is where you’ll find InBlooom, a shop specializing in both selling print goods and in teaching Taiwanese printing art to locals and visitors alike.

Modern Taipei is a massive city overlaid by a spider web of intercrossing metro lines on which you can spend 90 minutes getting from one end of town to the other. But Old Taipei, which sprang alongside the eastern bank of the Danshui river, was a smaller place, and much of it fit neatly inside the confines of a city wall, among the last built in the waning days of the Qing dynasty.

If you want to know more in general about a foreign place, you want to ask a local. If you want to know more about the culture and history of a foreign place, you want to ask a local expert. Travel in Taiwan recently did just this, paying local historian Zhuang Yong-ming a visit to learn more about one of Taipei City’s oldest districts, Dadaocheng, before going on an exploration tour of the area.